The 2012 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society (IACS) Summer School invites students from South, East and South-East Asia to engage with social, cultural and political concerns in Cultural Studies in Asia

The 2012 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society (IACS) Summer School invites students from South, East and South-East Asia to engage with social, cultural and political concerns in Cultural Studies in Asia

The 2012 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society (IACS) Summer School invites students from South, East and South-East Asia to engage with social, cultural and political concerns in Cultural Studies in Asia through teaching and conversations with experts from across Asia as faculty.

Core Course: Methodologies for Cultural Studies in Asia

The Core Course works through seminars, taught classrooms, tutorials, open spaces, field-trips and workshops. It will introduce students from Asia to key thinkers in the continent, to critically engage with their contexts and address questions of Cultural and National Identity, Modernity, Gender and Sexuality, New and Digital Technologies, Class, Politics and Asianism in contemporary Cultural Studies in Asia. A targeted outcome is to incubate and develop cross-culturaldialogues between students and faculty across Asia, to facilitate collaborations and exchange.

The first decade of the 21st Century has been a decade of drastic changes in the relationships between the State, the Citizen and the Markets. As globalisation consolidates itself in Asia, we see changes in the patterns of governance, of state operation, of citizen engagement and civic action. We are in the midst of major revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, powered by digital social change, some headed by cyber-utopians specializing in Web 2.0 and Social media. Phrases like ‘Twitter Revolutions’ and ‘Facebook Protests’ have become very common.

Instead of concentrating only on the newness of technology-mediated change, there is a need to engage with the changing landscape of political subjectivity and engagement through a reintegration of science and technology studies with cultural studies and social sciences. What does a digital subject look like? What are the futures of existing socio-cultural rights based movements? How do digital technologies produce new interfaces for interaction and mobilisation? How do we develop integrated science-technology-society approaches to understand our technology mediated contemporary and futures?

Optional Course 2: Technology, Culture and the Body

Instructors: Nitya Vasudevan, Tejaswini Niranjana, Ding Naifei

At this moment in history, we seem to be embedded in what Heidegger calls “the frenziedness of technology’’, and now more than ever, it is important that we try and understand how the gendered body relates to technology, and what this means for the domain of the cultural – For instance, what are the freedoms that technology is said to offer this body? What are these freedoms posed in opposition to? How do we understand technological practice contextually, both historically and in the contemporary? Is it possible to have a notion of the body that is outside technology, and a notion of technology that is outside cultural practice? Moving away from the idea of technology as a tool used by the human body, or the idea of technology as mere prosthesis or extension, the course will map the different ways of understanding the relationship between culture, technology and the body, specifically in the Asian context. It will involve examining practices, cultural formations and understandings that have emerged within various locations in Asia.

Applications

The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School invites applications from graduate and research students registered in courses in Humanities, Social Sciences, Cultural Studies and related interdisciplinary locations in Asia. The IACS Summer School has limited seats and preference will be given to students registered at universities or working with organizations participating in the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Consortium. Please fill up the application form here

· Last date for submitting the digital application – 7th May 2012

· Accepted students list published – 15th May 2012

· Confirmation of participation from accepted students – 15th June 2012

Registration: Confirmed students shall pay a registration fee of US$ 200 for the Core Course. Selected students enrolling for optional courses shall pay an additional registration fee of US$ 100.

Registration includes local hospitality, lunch on course days, dinners on special evenings, and coursepack.

Scholarships are available for a limited number of students, at the discretion of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Board.

All applications need to be accompanied by a recommendation letter from the teacher/supervisor/guide from the student’s home institution.